


to watch things grow

by minycrds



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Akaashi is a tattoo artist, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kid Fic, M/M, Parenthood, Scars, Slice of Life, Tattoos, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, because i can't decide on who takes whose last name, trans akaashi if you squint REAL hard, use of given names
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:29:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26802937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minycrds/pseuds/minycrds
Summary: “Daddy,” Kanna started, interrupting the silence that had fallen once the documentary’d started, “what do all of these mean?” She asked, running her fingers along Koutarou’s forearm.“Which one?” Koutarou asked, looking down at where she was pointing at a big piece in soft green and red that wrapped around his shoulder and bicep,“Oh, that’s a Camellia. It’s just grandma’s favourite flower”.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou
Comments: 5
Kudos: 108





	to watch things grow

Keiji woke up to Koutarou giving him a forehead kiss for the first time that morning. He stayed awake until he closed the door of the apartment on his way out and since it was Sunday, he let himself be lulled to sleep by the warmth of the sheets and blankets and the silence of their home. 

The second time he woke up, there were cold feet pressed against his pyjama pants, so cold he could feel them through the fabric. He hissed, eyes still closed pretending he was still asleep until little frozen hands reached for his shoulders to shake him awake.

“Daaaaad,” the little girl whispered as she shook him softly. Keiji just mumbled in response and reached for the little girl’s shoulders to bring her closer and snuggle her, “Where did daddy go?” she asked, despite knowing Koutarou went for a morning jog every single morning, even on Sundays. Keiji guessed the door closing had woken her up too and she’d thought it was later in the day, since they had a Sunday routine set that involved the three of them snuggling together until noon.

“Kanna, it’s 6 in the morning, let’s go to sleep,” he said, feeling his daughter laugh against his chest and trying to get her hands on his back for warmth. Sometimes Koutarou worried her little ice cube feet and hands meant she was sick, but Keiji was the exact same way and Koutarou was now the victim of two people shoving their cold hands up his jersey and tees whenever they could. 

The third time Keiji woke up that day, Koutarou was on the other side of the bed kissing their daughter’s forehead to wake her up. Koutarou always tried to be as gentle as possible, but Kanna was a heavy sleeper and it never worked. 

“Hey,” he whispered when he noticed Keiji was stirring awake once again, “Breakfast is ready. Wakey, wakey,” he continued in a sing-song voice, louder this time, hoping it’d be enough to wake up their kid. 

She was a messy sleeper, much like her father, but it was an adorable picture nevertheless. Her messy half black half purple bob rested above her head on the pillow almost like a crown and she’d left a purple stain on the bedsheets where she’d drooled next to Keiji’s elbow. It was freshly dyed by Koutarou himself a couple of days before after she’d asked to  _ please please please _ let her have cool hair like her daddy. Keiji had said no, but after using all sorts of ridiculous arguments, Kanna’d managed to convince him and Koutarou had said yes from the very beginning, anyway.

She stopped pretending to be asleep when Koutarou threatened to call for the tickle monster, who was just Koutarou doing a terrible impression of the cookie monster. She peered one eye open, biting her lip to stifle a laugh and Koutarou gasped, pretending to be surprised by her being actually awake. 

“Come on, breakfast time,” Keiji insisted, making his way out of the room after grabbing his glasses and leaving both his husband and daughter behind. He heard Koutarou go on about the importance of trying your hair up to eat and Kanna complain about his hair because that was  **not** fair. 

The table was already set and Keiji’s first instinct was to go get a cup of black coffee for himself. Koutarou carried a still sleepy Kanna with a low ponytail out of the bathroom and sat her on her chair. 

“You’re not a baby now, are you?” he teased, poking her in the ribs and Kanna pouted in response and straightened her back. Sometimes she wondered why daddy was allowed to do things she wasn’t, but dad never gave a solid explanation. Once he’d said daddy wasn’t his kid unlike her and he was already an adult, so he wouldn’t tell him off for slouching or bad table manners. 

Keiji ate quickly while Koutarou got distracted with his puppy videos on his phone and Kanna took smaller and smaller bites to make her tamagoyaki last longer. Her natto was still untouched and it would probably remain that way because it was Sunday and she would use it as an excuse not to eat it. 

“Can I stay in my pyjamas?” Kanna asked from the couch while Keiji did the dishes and Koutarou looked for something to watch next to her. This was their perfect Sunday routine, staying on their couch after breakfast under a blanket if it was cold or with the fans on when it got too hot until lunch. Kanna usually took an impromptu nap between them while Keiji tried to get some light work done despite it being his free day. Koutarou struggled letting go of work on Sundays too, anyway.

It was Koutarou’s turn to dry and put away the dishes so he went back to his bedroom to retrieve his ipad and then padded toward the living room to sit on the sofa next to Kanna, who was already complaining about the owl documentary Koutarou’d chosen. 

“You’re gonna fall asleep anyway,” he retorted while he scrolled down his phone, pointedly avoiding looking at the screen. Kanna crossed her arms over her chest and gave the most exaggerated pout. Keiji could feel the way she was making eyes at him to convince Koutarou but it was Sunday, after all, and Koutarou was right. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” he replied, also avoiding the screen and their daughter’s eyes. 

She huffed, slumped on the couch and sank in the space between them, pretending to be mad but five minutes into the documentary she was leaning against Koutarou’s right side with her eyes wide open. Fifteen minutes later she started getting distracted and couldn’t stay still, much like her father who had only learnt to manage his energy levels playing volleyball. Keiji knew they’d probably have to go for a walk to the park or something rather than stay home, it’d be best for her considering the weather and the exhausting week they’d all had, which meant he still had about three hours to work on the designs he hadn’t finished on Friday. As a rule, he didn’t answer emails on Sundays but there was no rule against him improving the ideas he was working on except for Koutarou’s disapproving look. 

“Daddy,” Kanna started, interrupting the silence that had fallen once the documentary’d started, “what do all of these mean?” She asked, running her fingers along Koutarou’s forearm. 

Keiji’d been lucky enough to use most of Koutarou’s body as a canvas well before he’d made a name of himself in the scene in Tokyo. He had practiced different styles on him because Koutarou’d always encouraged him to keep practicing and he’d sat there under Keiji’s needles for hours on end throughout their relationship, always patient and kind despite his mess ups and his anxiety. Keiji had already covered his back and arms completely and maybe once volleyball season was over he’d start working on his right thigh. 

Kanna had always been curious about their tattoos, especially once she’d started school and realised their friends’ parents weren’t covered in them unlike hers, but she’d never asked about anything in particular and she wasn’t allowed into the parlor that often either. Sometimes Keiji let her throw a suggestion or two and inspect his latest designs with Koutarou. 

“Which one?” Koutarou asked, looking down at where she was pointing at a big piece in soft green and red that wrapped around his shoulder and bicep,“Oh, that’s a Camellia. It’s just grandma’s favourite flower”.

Kanna hummed in response and turned his arm a little to see the rest of it, folding his sleeve up and tracing the petals of the flowers and the stem of the leaves that connected them all together. 

“Did dad do it?” 

“Yeah, your dad did all of them. Pretty damn cool, right?” 

Keiji smirked and cocked his eyebrow in response, eyes still on the screen of ipad. He knew the documentary had been completely forgotten once Kanna agreed and asked about the next tattoo, a long dragonfly that rested right below the last leaf of the shoulder piece, almost hiding from something.

“That’s just cool. It doesn’t mean anything,” Koutarou said and continued when Kanna pressed a blunt nail to a pair of minimalistic looking owls sitting on a branch she was familiar with, since she’d been allowed to colour them with her markers when she was bored time and time again along with the tattoo that followed, “The big one is your dad and the little one is you”. 

Kanna asked about each piece, including one of Koutarou’s favourites, the serotonin structure on the inside of his bicep and one of Keiji’s first big pieces that went all around his forearm and connected in intricate lines. Then she tapped Koutarou’s left arm and yanked him closer. Koutarou’s left arm tattoos looked more polished in comparison. Keiji had taken the time to design a full sleeve for him and they’d spent around a year and a half working on it, interrupted by volleyball season, Koutarou’s impatience and the careful planning and care Koutarou had to take of the white, thick and raised scars on his forearm. It was considerably closer to Keiji’s current line of work, leaning towards traditional japanese art rather than his own illustration style. His own back and arms were covered in similar patterns and lines.

Kanna looked over the lines and solid blocks of color almost as if analysing it and Keiji huffed at the idea of her loving his work as much as he did. She was talented, and the drawing stuck to the fridge door only proved it and Koutarou often encouraged her to keep at it because he was so so proud of her being as talented as her dad (that was a lie, of course, but Keiji didn’t mind as long as he got a kiss every time Koutarou said it as an apology). It started on his neck, and went along his shoulder, covering his scapula on his back and the sensitive skin of his armpit, and it ended just above his wrist. This arm was much heavier to the eye than the other one and the dragon, mask and flowers were in the same red, if only faded along the edges. Keiji was proud of it. 

“That one took a long time,” Keiji said, interrupting Koutarou before he could gloss over how important the piece was for both of them just by saying it was cool as heck, “I started it right after we started planning having you and I finished it when the possibility of you already had a name. Your daddy’s really impatient and since he plays so much we never found the right time to work on it because it had to heal properly to be as nice as it is now, so we worked on it little by little. He complained so much he almost cried when I was doing that black part there,” he continued, pointing at where Kanna’s fingers attempted to wrap around Koutarou’s bicep. He sounded amused. 

“Did you really?” she asked in surprise. Koutarou nodded almost proud of himself because still, he thought it was so damn cool. 

“I think I actually cried when your dad did my shoulder and back, that was terrible,” he replied, still holding his arm up for Keiji and Kanna to inspect. 

Keiji let his fingers run along the curve of his bicep and sat back, careful not to crush Kanna under his weight as he moved. Kanna’s fingers stayed on Koutarou’s elbow, turning it towards her to inspect the face of the dragon. Then, she continued downwards, splaying her fingers over the black ink that covered most of the inside of Koutarou’s forearm, only interrupted by the uninked crests of the waves and the red petal of a flower that sat in contrast on the other side of his arm. The scars weren’t as noticeable as when they had still been uncovered, but it hadn’t even been Koutarou nor Keiji’s intentions to cover them up, it was more like an afterthought that came with the design and Keiji’d to modify it a little only to make sure they wouldn’t interrupt the pattern on the part that was initially supposed to go there. Instead, he’d flipped the design, moving the flowers and delicate lines to the outside of his arm and covered most of the scars in black. They were still raised, so Kanna touched them softly and unsure, almost with curiosity since she’d never seen anything like that before. 

“How do you do these?” she asked Keiji as she pressed the pads of her fingers softly against each scar she found, unknowingly.

“Oh, you don’t,” Koutarou said.

“What are they?” 

“They’re like little worms. They’re itchy and mean and sometimes they hurt but most of the time I just forget they’re there,” he explained the best he could, “Your dad did a really good job covering them, he’s really cool and talented”.

“Oh, like the firefly”. 

Keiji let himself smile in response. He remembered how painful it’d been for Koutarou to cover those up. The old ones he couldn’t feel he’d had no trouble with, they’d been almost like a break in the haze of pain that getting the inside of his elbow covered in black had been, but the uglier ones that still had some color to it from years past had made him cry. Kanna yanked his arm closer and Koutarou complained while she inspected the rest of the piece.

“What does it mean?” she asked with an excited smile, almost hopeful this one would be as meaningful as the rest. 

“Nothing, actually,” Koutarou started, “well, it’s cool and it’s what your dad’s best at, you know? Like he said, when he started on my shoulder I’d just asked him if we were ready to have you and I think it helped him clear his mind a lot because babies are a huuuge responsibility, you know? You cried so much and were so demanding, seriously, your uncle KenKen didn’t like you at all,” Koutarou said jokingly, looking directly into her eyes as she frowned and scrunched her nose up, “and when he did my wrist you’d just started growing, we didn’t even know you existed then, but we knew you were you gonna be ours and we already loved you so much,” he finished, smiling as Kanna’s expression softened. 

She turned around to face Keiji and smiled brightly, the same way Koutarou did, with all her honesty and as bright as the sun. 

“Dad, you’re the coolest”.

**Author's Note:**

> I had this idea in my mind for ages because I have a need for bokuaka being parents and there's barely anything in the tag so I had to write it myself, of course. I have more headcanons about Kanna that I'd love to share so Maybe I'll write more but I can't promise much tbh. If anyone's wondering Kanna is their biological daughter (hence the trans akaashi if you squint tag lol) and she's bokuto's smile and eye colour but akaashi's hair and eye shape and nose. Anyway, I hoped you liked it, this isn't supposed to be serious or anything but it'd be nice to see hcs about bokuaka being parents or anything along those lines so feel free to comment!!


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